Wednesday, July 25, 2012

8/17 Bev and Shannon's, Turners Falls, MA
8/25 1794 Meetinghouse, New Salem, MA I am playing #4 But the write up is below some sick gigs...

1794 MEETINGHOUSE PROUDLY PRESENTS A SPECIAL AUGUST SERIES “NORTHERN ROUTES: 4 ADVENTURES IN NEW MUSIC”The artists participating in Northern Routes are explorers,
discoverers, charting unknown aural territories and shifting the old,
familiar musical boundaries. They use laptops, mixing boards, field
recordings, acoustic instruments and found objects to create sonic
landscapes that are uplifting, haunting, challenging and occasionally
uncomfortable. Experimental music has a home in the Pioneer Valley
because of the community of artists residing here, but it also has an
enthusiastic audience willing to question the same assumptions.
Ultimately the goal of this series is to bring that excitement to the
North Quabbin. Co-organizer Adam Frost adds, “We expect the Northern
Routes audience will be as challenged and engaged as they would be with
contemporary art in a gallery or museum, but with this music there’s a
very different alchemy, an exciting interaction that draws the listener
into the creative process.”

Saturday, August 4, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
Northern Routes kicks off with a heavy-hitting bill of four
performers, familiar from the underground music scene of the Pioneer
Valley and beyond. Son of Earth formed more than a decade ago, and over
the years has winnowed its sound down from noise/anti-folk to something
quieter but no less tension-filled and demanding, becoming what Sonic
Youth’s Thurston Moore describes as “one of the tightest bands I’ve
seen.. and all they do is sit there making weird noises.. quietly.” 200
Years is a collaboration between Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers) and Ben
Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), showcasing the artists in a lo-fi,
stripped-back setting of guitar and vocals where “the sounds are more
not there than they are there.” Guitarist Bill Nace, in contrast, fills
the room with sound, slowly creating sonic stormclouds out of
string-scraping, feedback and other unconventional techniques. Author
Steven Zultanski will round out the evening with a reading of his
conceptualist poetry.

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Northern Routes #2 with Marissa Nadler + Bunwinkies + Hallock Hill:

Saturday, August 11, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
The second installment of Northern Routes takes the audience on a
more introspective path. Marissa Nadler, who studied visual arts at RISD
before making music her career, fingerpicks and sings dreamy
story-songs of seduction, loss and death with “the sort of voice you’d
follow straight to Hades” (Pitchfork). Valley favorite Bunwinkies, of
Turner Falls and Easthampton, bring a sweet, folk-tinged psychedelia
that incorporates the mellowness of 60s folk-rock with the darker
seductiveness of 80s Paisley Underground groups like Opal and Mazzy
Star. Hallock Hill (New York-based guitarist Tom Lecky) uses laptop and
guitar to create mesmerizing, evocative soundscapes that have been
likened to “unpacking 100-year old handtools, bird’s nests, alfalfa hay,
heirloom jewelry, and a 300 page manual on joinery techniques from
inside the soundhole of a single acoustic guitar” (Dan Bodah, WFMU's
Airborne Event).

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Northern Routes #3 with MV & EE +P.G. Six:

Saturday, August 18, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
After a decade of visionary innovation in the 90s as part of the NYC
“free folk” collective that was Tower Recordings and another decade of
refinement to their individual sounds, former bandmates Matt Valentine
(half of MV & EE with Erika Elder) and Pat Gubler (P.G. Six) will
have a reunion of sorts, sharing the bill on August 18th. Since the
demise of Tower, Valentine and Elder have approached folk and
psychedelia with a maximalist, “more-is-more” glee, playing
effects-soaked ragas and coloring the fabric of their unique brand of
Americana in the most unlikely tie-dyed hues with nods to Neil Young,
the Grateful Dead and Sun Ra at their free-ranging bests. By contrast,
Pat Gubler–who plays under the name P.G. Six both solo and with band in
tow–has followed a more contemplative path, one first charted by the
troubadours of Britain’s 1960s folk revival, while maintaining his
identity from Tower days as an explorer of rare and delicate
atmospheres.

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Northern Routes #4 with Red Heart the Ticker + Crystalline Roses:

Saturday, August 25, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
The Northern Routes series wraps up with a return to roots, northern
and other. Red Heart theTicker, the husband-and-wife duo Tyler Gibbons
and Robin MacArthur, released their most recent album in the fall of
2011, reworking songs collected by Robin’s grandmother Margaret
MacArthur, a folksong collector and singer from Vermont; Your Name in
Secret I Would Write erases time, bringing voices from the past into the
present, creating musical dialogues with ghosts. Crystalline Roses
mixes one part Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, one part
Fahey’s “American Primitive” guitar, and one part Robbie Basho ragas
with his own distinct style to create a unique blend of cosmic one-man
string-band music.